The present invention relates to worksurfaces, and in particular to a system of worksurfaces for office workstations.
Open office plans are well-known in the art, and generally comprise large, open floor spaces in buildings that are furnished in a manner that is readily reconfigurable to accommodate the ever changing needs of a specific user, as well as the divergent requirements of different tenants. One arrangement commonly used for furnishing open plans includes movable partition panels that are detachably interconnected to partition off the open spaces into individual workstations or offices. Such partition panels are configured to receive hang-on furniture units, such as worksurfaces, overhead cabinets, shelves, etc., and are generally known in the office furniture industry as "Systems Furniture." Another arrangement for dividing or partitioning open plans includes modular furniture arrangements, in which a plurality of differently shaped, freestanding furniture units are interconnected in a side-by-side relationship, with upstanding privacy screens attached to at least some of the furniture units to create individual, distinct workstations, or offices.
Such prior art partitioning arrangements create relatively permanent, multi-function workstations for the users, wherein the workstations are required to support both individual work activities as well as facilitating interpersonal activity in today's highly dynamic and technology based workplace. The worksurfaces incorporated in these workstations are typically comprised of a series of rectilinear worksurfaces arranged about the interior perimeter of the workstation. These worksurfaces may also include one or more worksurfaces having either a circular or polygonal inner edge presented to the user. These worksurfaces are relatively uniform in size and shape which, in the traditional office, was satisfactory for an individual worker whose work activities concentrated on primarily hard copy, paper-based work day activities. However, these types of conventional worksurfaces and worksurface systems are not particularly adapted to support workers engaged in today's electronic office in which the worker has at his disposal and as an integral part of his workstation, computers, dictaphones, communications equipment, and other electronic office appliances in addition to the traditional paper-based aspects of an office. As a result of the varied uses of the worksurfaces in an individual workstation, the worksurfaces employed therein must be adaptable to a number of uses and must do so efficiently. The worksurface elements employed in the workstation must provide the worker with a maximum surface area for supporting the electronic and communications equipment utilized therein while concurrently presenting a user friendly and ergonomic work area for the user to perform the more traditional paper-based aspects of employment.
These varied necessities of the modern work-place require a worksurface configuration in a workstation to incorporate worksurface elements of differing depths to facilitate the requirements of varied worksurface usage. Additionally, the worksurfaces should provide a maximum surface area storage while simultaneously providing ease of user access to those areas of the worksurface used in the paper-based aspects of day-to-day work. These requirements must be satisfied while presenting the user with an ergonomic and aesthetically pleasing environment having a user interface area that continuously transitions from one worksurface capability to another, and thus eliminating discontinuities such as internal corners which tend to be avoided by the user and thus become unusable work space. As building costs continue to escalate, increasing numbers of workers are now being supported in open office settings instead of conventional private offices in order to gain increased efficiency of real estate and life cycle costs. Such efficiency has heretofore not been found in current configurations of worksurfaces utilized in work spaces. Thus, there is a need for a system of worksurfaces providing the worker with a combination of surface storage and user interface areas in an efficient ergonomic setting.